Monthly Archives: July 2011

If you haven’t met my grandfather, then you might not understand my family or me. I’d like to think there’s a bit of my grandfather in me. His impression on my father is undeniable. If anything, I want to say my family is special. We’re exceptionally close; no doubt from my grandfather’s influence.

If you haven’t met my grandfather, you haven’t met one of the most patient people in the world. I’ve have never seen him upset, never heard him raise his voice. He’s the most gentle I know. An engineer, his house is full of objects he’s remade/improvised, because he […]

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I recently bought Bob Moggridge’s book Designing Interactions. It’s a really awesome book, full insight on design, the ideas behind the work, and is absolutely full of real-world examples. It’s going to take me some time to get through it, and I’ve been trying to think of a good way to either annotate, highlight the relevant parts internally or externally.

The ideas of interaction have recently been taking a more prominent role in my non-concert music work.

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Last night, I had a really nice hang and conversation with a fellow doctoral student, whom I don’t get to see much anymore. Him, another doctoral student and I spent a couple of hours comparing dissertation work, musical advances, future plans, and general chit-chat.

I got some great advice about the anxiety I’ve been feeling about finishing school and entering the real world. Jeff, who had spent some time outside of academia before starting this doctorate, told me the fear I have is natural, expected, and won’t really go away. He felt it before his doctorate, working, and would […]

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I recently got took part in the New Music Controllers workshop at CCRMA, Stanford. Overall it was a great experience. I took a similar class at LSU this previous semester but was interested to see how differently it was as CCRMA. In the end, it was not very different, but the personal connections and the information I gathered about the CCRMA was worth the cost of the trip.

Unfortunately the main instructor, Ed Berdahl, was stricken with E. Coli after a trip from Germany, and was out 4 of the 5 days. It apparently has a gestation period of a week or two before you’re gripped with pain. Chris Carlson had to take over for Ed the rest of the week, which was not turrible.

The building at CCRMA is beautiful. It sits on a hill that overlooks the rest of the university. It would have been nice to see what other work is being done there, but it was relatively quiet while we were there.

The whole concept of the BeagleBoard is interesting: they’re basically tiny computers, similar to your smart phone’s power. It has the ability to output audio and video. The biggest selling point is that the hardware and software would endure (since everything is stand-alone and housed on the tiny palm-sized board) well past any well-intentioned new music controller should. For an installation, it would be awesome. But for the use of instrument, you would always require additional cabling (for sound, amplification).

Any complaint I have about the whole week the strong-arm prices for the use/purchase of BeagleBoards and Arduinos, which were supposedly given to them for free. Of course they allowed to do whatever they want with them, but the cost of the workshop, registration, and then the eventual purchase of the units would have been $700+. Not counting the flight and week-long meals, I was barely breathing with my grad-school budget.

If money wasn’t an issue, I would probably go to all the CCRMA workshops. The people, area, facilities, and climate is just awesome.

I did glean some information on how they run their Listening Room, which is an awesome space for ambisonics. I think it has 24(?) multi-level channels.